Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Celebrating American History in Brooklyn
15
items From colonial settlements to abolitionist movements and urban innovation, Brooklyn’s landmarks reflect the city’s diversity and resilience.
Map
A private, active 10-acre burial ground established in 1849, the Friends Cemetery in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park is one of the city’s oldest Quaker cemeteries, reflecting early American egalitarian burial practices.
Friends Cemetery
Founded in 1654, this church in Flatbush marks the first continuous Protestant congregation in New York City and features a 17th-century cemetery with one of the oldest surviving African-American headstones (1715).
Flatbush Reformed Church
The site of the Revolutionary War’s pivotal 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, now occupied by Fort Hamilton—America’s oldest active-duty military installation—underscores Brooklyn’s role in the American Revolution.
Fort Hamilton Marks Revolutionary War Battle Amid Army's 250th Anniversary
Established in 1838, this 484-acre national historic landmark in Brooklyn is a necropolis of American history, housing graves of industrialists, artists, and activists, including inventor Samuel F.B. Morse and novelist Edith Wharton.
The Green-Wood Cemetery
A center honoring the 19th-century free Black community of Weeksville, the first African-American neighborhood in New York City, it highlights abolitionist and civil rights efforts in antebellum Brooklyn.
Weeksville Heritage Center
Founded in 1881, this institution preserves and interprets Brooklyn’s history, including collections on labor movements, immigration, and activism.
Center for Brooklyn History
Built in 1652, the Wyckoff House is the oldest Dutch colonial home in Brooklyn and one of the oldest surviving structures in New York City, symbolizing early European settlement.
The Wyckoff House Museum
Opened in 1915, this site was the first formal public garden in Brooklyn, blending horticultural innovation with environmental education in the early 20th century.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Discovered in 2018, this burial site dates to the 18th century and sheds light on the lives of enslaved and free Black residents in colonial New York, with ongoing archaeological research.
Flatbush African Burial Ground
Built in 1896, this Gothic Revival structure exemplifies late 19th-century architectural innovation and the spread of New Thought spiritual movements.
First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City - NYC
A Civil War memorial at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring a 54-foot statue of Prometheus and its sculptor’s allegorical reinterpretation of human progress and labor.
Grand Army Plaza
Opened in 1900 with Andrew Carnegie funding, this Beaux-Arts building symbolizes the democratization of knowledge and the “City of Libraries” initiative.
Central Library
This waterfront park preserves the 19th-century coal piers that powered New York City and commemorates the African-American laborers who built and maintained them.
Empire Fulton Ferry
Honoring the 800+ workers who died in the 1946 Liberty ship explosion (the “Catalina disaster”), this monument reflects the era’s industrial risks and labor history.
Brooklyn Navy Yard Tours - Turnstile Tours
Once a major transportation hub (1858–1962), the Long Island Rail Road’s original Brooklyn station exemplifies mid-19th-century transit expansion and urban connectivity.
Historic Brooklyn: Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue in 1929